Movie Review: ON THE JOB (2013)

Two inmates (Gerald Anderson & Joel Torre) are hired out by their prison as assassins. Released on day-passes, the two men eliminate political targets with ties to corrupt government officials, and as a reward are able to send money to their families, as well as spend the occasional night back home. Unbeknownst to them, a police inspector (Piolo Pascual) with close ties to the government is hot on their trail.

Erik Matti's ON THE JOB is an action-thriller that works as both crowd-pleasing entertainment and sophisticated adult fare. It's not hard to imagine that Matti's going to make a big name for himself off this, with it playing like a cross between Johnnie To and Fernando Meirelles. It probably leans towards To in that, while social commentary is at the film's heart, it's first and foremost a a genre film and doesn't have art-house pretensions. The two hit-men are typical of the genre, with Anderson being the young gun mentored by the older, wiser Torre, who's about to be paroled and needs to make sure his replacement is up to snuff.

Both of them are terrific, especially Torre (this would be a great role for someone like Bryan Cranston in an American redux- which apparently is already on the books). What distinguishes the film though is the premise. Clearly, prisons is Manila are far different from their western counterparts, with them resembling a kind of shanty-town free from cells. The idea of the assassins being released on day passes to kill government witnesses seems like a stretch, but apparently the film is inspired by a real life scandal. Some of the best parts of the film follow Torre as he visits his family, who think he's working as a kind of contract worker, explaining his long absences, and frequent returns flush with cash.

However, ON THE JOB is not without it's problems. With the two prison hit-men being such interesting characters, it's a shame that Matti splits the film's focus between them, and the cop on their trail. Pascual's character is well-written, being the son of a disgraced cop who married into a politically powerful family and finds his loyalties torn. But, too much of his part feels like generic good guys-bad guys stuff, as the anti-hero prisoner hit-men just can't help but be much more interesting than the good-looking hero cop. There's also a few goofy bits and pieces here and there, such as an over-reliance on Filipino pop-tune interludes, and a hilariously tacked-on love scene that seems like it was only thrown in to get a bit of skin into the movie.

Imperfect as it may be, ON THE JOB is nonetheless a major accomplishment for both the director and the Filipino film industry as a whole. Despite the reportedly low budget of only a million dollars (as per Wikipedia) it feels polished and slick, with some really interesting tracking shots, such as a nifty one where we follow Anderson around the prison as he bribes guards and gets favors from inmates. While I still think it could have been great rather than just very good if the focus wasn't split up between the cops and inmates, ON THE JOB is still a damn good movie, and well worth seeking-out.


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RED 2

While trying to lead a normal life with girlfriend Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is approached by Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), who is afraid that there are people following them, but Frank shrugs him off. After appealing a second time, Marvin drives off, but his car is blown up. Sarah convinces Frank, who does not believe Marvin is dead, to go to Marvin's funeral, and after the funeral, Frank is taken to be interrogated at a Yankee White Facility. During the interrogation, Jack Horton (Neal McDonough) appears, killing most of the facility's personnel, and tells Frank that he will torture Sarah in order to get information out of Frank. Frank manages to escape with the help of Marvin, who turns out to be alive, and they go on the run with Sarah. Marvin explains that he and Frank were being hunted down because they were listed as participants in a secret operation codenamed Nightshade. The operation was conducted in the Cold War in order to smuggle a nuclear weapon into Russia piece by piece. Victoria (Helen Mirren) calls and tells them she has accepted a contract from MI6 to kill Frank. Meanwhile, top contract killer Han Jo-bae (Lee Byung-hun) is given a contract to kill Frank as well.

Frank, Marvin, and Sarah travel to Paris to track down a man nicknamed "The Frog" (David Thewlis), with Han, whose plane they stole, and the Americans on their tails. As they arrive in Paris, they are stopped by Katya (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a Russian secret agent who Frank had a relationship with earlier in his career. Katya is in search of Nightshade as well, and teams up with them to find The Frog. After The Frog flees from them, Frank and Katya catch him and bring him back to his house, where Sarah succeeds in wooing him to help them. The Frog gives them the key to his security box, which Katya attempts to take from Frank after drugging him, but Marvin gives her a fake key. He, Frank, and Sarah find documents in the security box which point to Dr. Edward Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant physicist, as the creator of the bomb involved with Operation Nightshade.

They find out that Bailey is still alive, having been held in an asylum for the criminally insane in London for thirty-two years. After arriving in London, the trio are confronted by Victoria, but Victoria helps to fake their deaths. Victoria then poses as an insane woman in order to gain access to the asylum. Frank and Victoria meet Bailey, who is hyperactive and does not respond to their questions. After a while, Bailey reveals that the bomb is still in Moscow. They go to Moscow, and after a close call with Han, Bailey comes to the conclusion that he hid the bomb in the Kremlin. They break into the Kremlin, and Bailey locates the bomb, but as they are about to leave, they are stopped by Katya. Frank convinces her to return to their side As they celebrate their success, Victoria calls Frank from London and tells him that Bailey was locked up because he wanted to see the bomb go off. Bailey holds Frank at gunpoint and confirms Victoria's message, revealing that he made a deal with Horton and the Americans to leave with the bomb. He then shoots Katya, staging her death at Frank's hands, and leaves. Horton reneges on his deal with Bailey, intending to question him, but Bailey escapes by using a nerve agent he created. Bailey moves to the Iranian embassy in London, and as Frank attempts to follow, he is confronted by Han, and after a fistfight, Frank asks Han to join sides with him and stop the bomb. Han eventually relents, and they set in place a plan to recapture Bailey and the bomb.

Sarah seduces the Iranian ambassador and takes him hostage on the pretext of women's rights in Iran. Marvin sets in place a diversion, and the rest come in disguise to "fix" the problem. When they arrive, they discover that Bailey has set the bomb timer off. Bailey kidnaps Sarah and goes to the airport to escape the imminent explosion. Frank, Marvin, Victoria, and Han give chase, but are themselves chased by guards from the embassy. After they escape, they arrive at the airport, and Frank saves Sarah from Bailey, but is forced by him to take the bomb off the plane. They reunite with Marvin, Victoria, and Han and wait for their imminent deaths, but the bomb explodes in the air. Frank reveals that he sneaked the bomb on the plane. The movie closes with a scene showing Sarah enjoying herself on a mission with Frank and Marvin.

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THE LONE RANGER

Depp wears ghostly-white dry, cracked mud all over his face, set off by four black stripes (they're a little like zebra markings, and a little like tears). Atop his hat is a dead crow, which he keeps feeding birdseed. It's as if Tonto knew something we didn't: He's either clued in to the spirit world, or nuts, or maybe a little of both. Clearly, he's ''the Jack Sparrow character,'' but Depp, with eyes color-coordinated to his death-mask makeup, makes Tonto very different than Jack. He's not dissolute, he's stern and controlled, a figure off a wooden nickel come to life. With his me-speakum-wisdom-to-the-white-man epigrams, he may be a racially tinged caricature of a Native American ''noble savage,'' but Depp doesn't run from the stereotype. He bites into it and recontextualizes it, and he also satirizes/embraces the more recent (and just as patronizing) image of the Native American as all-knowing mystical soothsayer. That's the sly joke of Tonto's presence: He's a pop-culture artifact that Depp twists around and makes kind of cool. Depp sets himself up as a scene-stealer, and if the script (by Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott, and Terry Rossio) had given him some great lines, he alone might have made the movie worth seeing. But The Lone Ranger doesn't provide Depp with the level of zingers he needed; it gives him the dialogue equivalent of birdseed. You appreciate his stoic-joker presence, but the joke doesn't detonate.

Tonto first encounters John Reid (Armie Hammer), the Southern-born, East Coast-educated district attorney who will become the Lone Ranger, after Reid is shot and left for dead in the Texas desert, along with half a dozen other men, including his older brother (James Badge Dale). Even though the movie is being marketed to families, it's almost squalidly violent -- and the slaughter is only there to set up a basic revenge plot. For a long time, the priggishly fair-minded Reid, in his silky three-piece suits, doesn't seem to have a bloodthirsty thought in his head. That's okay: We don't want the Lone Ranger to be Charles Bronson. Yet we do want him to be a captivating hero. Armie Hammer, for all his stalwart height, has a smiling softness about him that makes the character a little too vague and wussy. Hammer doesn't command the center of the movie. He just sort of occupies it.

Verbinski orchestrates a dense, hectic conspiracy plot that hinges on the building of the railroads (and the railroading of Native Americans), and he fills the screen with scowling, disreputable types who have no layers at all. There's William Fichtner as the film's chief sociopath, a skinny rotter with burning eyes who suggests Iggy Pop as a black-hatted bad guy; Tom Wilkinson as a mustache-twirling Mr. Big who's out to make a fortune off the expansion of the rail system; Helena Bonham Carter as a jaded madam with a prosthetic leg made of carved ivory; and Barry Pepper as an Army captain who's styled to look like Gen. George Custer. (Given that the film is set in 1869, which was Custer's heyday, you wonder why they didn't just call him that.) All these characters are nasty, but not one of them in a truly fun way.

The fun, of course, should be in the Lone Ranger's interplay with Tonto, but the two lead actors strike very few oddball-buddy sparks. Maybe that's because The Lone Ranger, in a virulent case of what seems to be this summer's reigning blockbuster disease, spends nearly all of its endless running time shuttling from one plot machination to the next before John Reid finally lets go of his high ideals, puts on his black mask and white hat, and truly becomes the Lone Ranger. Basically, the movie is a two-hour set-up to a half-hour action climax, which Verbinski stages like a louder, more glossily impersonal Steven Spielberg. Still, there's no denying that Verbinski is good at this stuff. When the train is speeding along, and the Lone Ranger is riding his white horse on top of the train, and Tonto is dancing to avoid bullets, and a bridge the size of Hoover Dam is about to be blown up, and The William Tell Overture is finally — finally! — budda-bump budda-bumping away, your heart races a little bit, and you realize: This is why I wanted to see this movie! Of course, the action climax just goes on and on, making The Lone Ranger the sort of movie that delivers too much too late and still manages to make it feel like too little.

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Upside Down

A long time ago two planets came so close to each other they are almost touching. Instead of the skyline all its inhabitants see is the terrain of another planet. Each planet has its own gravity laws, with the upper planet being the ruling corporate utopia, drowning in wealth and luxury, sucking out the life of the lower planet, which is plunged into a deep energy crisis.

The people from the two worlds are strictly forbidden to communicate; the punishment of defying this law is death. But they are condemned to a fast demise if they venture into forbidden territory anyway as the laws of gravity of the ‘enemy’ planet will make them burn alive. The premise of Upside Down is indeed a promising one.

The Plot

A boy named Adam (Jim Sturgess) lives on the dark dystopian lower planet. His parents die in a plant blast, so his Aunt Becky is the only source of comfort in his life. 

She treats him to magical flying pancakes, made with the honey from pink bee pollen gathered from the flowers of both worlds (that is later used to develop anti-aging anti-gravity face cream). A girl named Eden (Kirsten Dunst) lives in the opulent ‘heavens’. One day when Adam tosses a paper plane up into the sky, the two meet and become friends, despite the dangers such a friendship entails. That’s the strangest ‘meet cute’ moment in cinema to date.

The young couple meets at the top of the two mountains, having childish, silly fun together. The image of them sharing treats while looking at each other upside down, with the intricate oceans of clouds between them, is something entirely new in terms of cinematic imagery. Adam and Eden can’t be together but they find ways to enjoy each other’s company, which inevitably gets them into trouble when vigilant citizens start shooting at them (how typical) and Adam lets go of the rope Eden hangs on to, which lands her on the ground, with a really bad cut to the head. Adam assumes the worst, living in the darkness for years after.

10 years later Adam is working on a magic cream with his magic pink pollen ingredients. He thinks eden is dead (but it’s his unkempt hair that needs an emergency room resuscitation). Watching TV, he suddenly sees Eden’s face and all his feelings for her rush back to him. She works in the Tower (a nice twist on the unattainable princess up in the air cliché) and suffers from almost total amnesia of their pure love, except for an odd dream-nightmare here and there. Adam is determined to get to her and goes to Transworld where he meets friendly co-worker Bob (Timothy Spall) who collects old stamps from the underworld and is secretly resenting the corporation he works for, ready to exchange cool ‘poor’ stuff for a new upper world jacket for Adam.

Adam’s friends devise a special suit for him, in which he is able to see eden long enough to catch her interest before his flesh begins to burn. Romance is rekindled, followed by a string of disappointments, necessary in any love story to build up tension and bring the audience to a satisfactory ending. I will not reveal the last twist for those who do want to see Upside Down in the movie theatre, but let’s just say that two things are clear from it: 1) the couple find a way to irreversibly join the two worlds, and 2) no – there won’t be a sequel (phew).

Dystopian elements characteristic of the genre make an interesting backdrop for the romantic convections. The classic conflict of the ups and the lows is absolutely literal in Upside Down. The all-powerful corporation’s presence is felt everywhere, and its ant-like subjects are treated like slaves, relegated to infamy once they become irrelevant. The ups own the riches and the latest technologies, impersonated by the gleaming super technical Tower; the lows suffer from an energy crisis, pollution and rampant industrialization, while people commute to work on foot or by bike and live in a world lagging behind technologically. In the most popular cafe, barb wire separates the haves from the have-nots – just in case anyone forgets themselves. Scarcity of resources makes food coupons and a tangible deficit of the absolute necessities everyday reality, exemplified by street children out of a Charles Dickens illustration, begging Adam to build a toy plane for them. 

Because there is no horizon and sky here, all the people see are the reverse version of their own society: the opulent ‘ups’ are always reminded of the miserable plot of the poor; the lows are blinded by the bright lights, glitz and glamour of the upper planet. Propaganda is rampant with Transworld brainwashing proletariat drones into winning work places in the Tower, where a better life awaits them. No world of that kind would survive without militarization, so there are security people at every corner- again, just in case. 

The visuals are at times breathtaking in Upside Down. The up world is filled with sunlight, gorgeously dressed people and immaculate futuristic architecture. The lows live in a black and white world with an occasional pop of the color pink (to indicate the magic of the bee pollen or a child’s bike). The opening scenes of mountainous terrains and surreal cloud seas in between the two planets are a marvel of CGI, fake snow and all. Vibrant blue upside down cocktails are a fun idea and Kirsten Dunst looks her cute self sipping on them against the dark-eyed Jim Sturgess. 

The film is pestered by upside down shots of places and faces, which feel new and fresh at first, but can get a little nauseating by the end  of it, which is not helped by the sometimes cheesy score. The action is slow-moving, inviting the viewer to savour the truly breathtaking visuals.

 The concept of Upside Down is new and exciting with an interesting story and some of the best visuals you can find in any film out there right now but sadly the main characters sometimes feel a little stilted and they lack that chemistry which would really have brought the script to life. Upside Down is a perfect example of the escapism that modern cinema is: perfectly pretty and irreversibly empty.

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Man of Tai Chi

The directorial debut of Keanu Reeves was a particularly exciting prospect. Any martial arts film with Yuen Woo Ping as the choreographer is a must-see, but throwing in stars like Iko Uwais, Tiger Chen, Simon Yam and Karen Mok made this especially enticing.

Man of Tai Chi is a twist on a classic tournament-style martial arts film. Fighters engage in brutal unarmed combat while being filmed by hidden cameras for high-paying, bloodthirsty internet customers around the world.

The film follows a fictional character Tiger Chen - played by a real man named Tiger Chen - as he puts his Tai Chi skills to use in an official Kung Fu tournament before being lured into a deadly underground fight club. Tiger is compelled to earn money through fighting to save his master's temple, despite his master insisting Tai Chi should never be used to make money through fighting. Keanu plays an evil businessman who lures Tiger into the illegal fighting ring, while a tenacious police officer tries to gather evidence on the operation.

Keanu is, as always, pretty bad on-screen. The guy was good in the Bill & Ted movies, but not much else. Adding to his lack of acting ability and general laughableness, in this film he is putting on a cartoonishly gruff voice similar to Christian Bale's in the Dark Knight movies.

There's also some problems with the storyline of Man of Tai Chi, mainly with some baffling and silly developments around the film's conclusion. I can't really spell these out without giving spoilers, but they're pretty stupid.

But those sorts of issues don't matter - this is a fight movie; a refreshingly straight-up, old school fight movie. So what matters is how satisfying the fights are, and little else.

The fight scenes, while at times great, are frustrating. There are some truly beautiful moves performed in Man of Tai Chi as Tiger Chen and his opponents are very highly skilled. The sheer amount of screen time spent on fight scenes is also impressive - it seems like over half.

But there are two fights that are over extremely quickly when they really shouldn't be. Iko Uwais had the lead role in The Raid, the best action movie of the last few years and certainly the best martial arts film since Ong Bak. I was super excited to see him fight Tiger Chen in this and sadly, they barely trade any blows at all.

The climactic fight is instead, predictably, between Tiger and Keanu. It's not too bad, but it is plagued by an issue that negatively affects all of the fight scenes in the film. They're not directed all that well - sorry, Keanu. The choreography is fantastic and you do get to see some really awesome moves, but the sound design and camerawork take away a lot of the impact that these fight scenes should have. This is the film's primary problem.


I enjoyed the action of Man of Tai Chi quite a bit nonetheless; but in the hands of a more experienced director and more time devoted to the two most promising fights, I would've enjoyed it a heck of a lot more.
I love that this is Keanu's directorial debut, however, rather than some mopey little American indie film or something. There are quite a few nice little touches that clearly show he has a genuine passion for Kung Fu movies. If he keeps working with talent as strong as this and ups his game as a filmmaker, we could be in for some really cool stuff from him in the future.

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Pacific Rim

One of the most important things any great action movie needs is a lead actor who can deliver an absurd line and have it sound awesome. One who makes you cheer instead of laugh when he says something that is by all rights laughable. Pacific Rim doesn't have one of those.

It's awesome because it delivers what it promised us: giant robots fighting giant monsters with a giant, giant amount of fun and imagination. We trusted Guillermo del Toro with this thing, and the dozen or so moments of You thought that was cool? No, THIS is cool! moments mixed into the smartly choreographed action and dumb-in-the-good-ways plot pays off that trust.

Pacific Rim drops us in the last days of the Kaiju war, a battle between man and giant monster that's been escalating for the previous decade. The bulk of the early portion is spent in a base housing the last remaining Jaegers (giant robots for fighting said giant monsters) and their crews. We follow around a Jaeger pilot wash-out named Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), his boss Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), a few other pilots presumably with other Action Movie Refrigerator Magnet names, and a research team of two (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman). There are only a few Jaegers left, and Becket's the only one who knows how to pilot one of the older models. Collectively, it's their job to finish off the Kaiju in one last push before the balance tilts and the world ends.

From here, you will notice the story's jumps in logic. There are so very, very many of them. They don't matter. In fact, they're honest to god plot features, not holes. They're like the travel scenes in an Indiana Jones movie, where we don't need to know how you get from Point A to Point B, just show us on the map.

Forty seconds into the Pacific Rim, we're told the Kaiju come from another dimension, through a portal at the bottom of the Pacific. This is never questioned scientifically, or logically (why does it have to be at the bottom of the Pacific if it's just a dimensional portal?). And it doesn't matter. Explaining that, or even trying, would slow the movie down for no reason. No one wants two scenes about dumb non-science when we already have what we came for: Giant-ass, interdimensional Kaiju monsters. GO. Oh, what's that you say? The beaurocrats want to just build a wall instead of using Jaegers? EFF THAT. Let's just take all our giant robots to one giant base and smash things!

Speaking of that base (named "Shatterdome", in case you had any lingering doubts about exactly what you were here for), it's pretty great. The Hong Kong stronghold is where most of the movie takes place, and if it doesn't have the same "the entire world is fighting this fight" vibe as ID4, it's got enough of a multinational thing going on that it's almost like Bloodsport or even Mortal Kombat, in that the story is almost totally separated from the rest of the world, and individual nations are represented by their Jaeger teams.

The Shatterdome can best be summed up by one scene. We're led around the launching bay, given the names of the Jaegers and their crews, sizing everyone up. It made me wish there were fifteen more of them, even if we only got to see them fight from a distance. And that's pretty much all there is to say about plot.

Without much plot go on Pacific Rim is the kind of movie that lives and dies by its special effects. They're phenomenal, but more importantly, imaginative. Through most of the big action sequences, you will totally buy the scale, fluidity, and physics of how these giant, impossible robots are fighting these giant(er), impossible monsters. There are maybe two shots in the entire movie—five seconds total, if that—in which the effects look a little awkward. Whatever. The action is totally followable, with the exception of some portions of the climactic showdown. You know what's happening, and to whom. That's rare in a lot of current action movies (looking at you, Transformers). And it's FUN. Oh man is it fun. So many parents are going to have to dig out ice packs because of "ELBOW ROCKET" punch incidents after this.

The characters aren't characters so much as attitude vessels, arranged neatly into places to fight with monsters or each other or deliver a certain kind of line. And the thing is, THAT'S TOTALLY FINE, because del Toro comes in and out of everything just before the wheels come off. But you do wish the performances were a little better. You almost feel bad for Hunnam in some scenes, where he's handed a cheeseball line you just know Will Smith would have made sing in ID4, or even lesser action stars, but he just doesn't have it in him, so he goes through the (still very enjoyable) motions.

Day, Gorman, and Ron Perlman keep their side-stories moving along—Day and Perlman especially—with plenty of jokes. And Rinko Kikuchi (Brothers Bloom), who plays Hunnam's Jaeger co-pilot, does fine with the little she's asked to do.

It's Idris Elba who makes this thing work, though. He's the only actor on hand that can take this corn-fed script and turn it into the quotables that fill up middle school buses for summers at a time. His lines are just as outrageous as everyone else's—"The world is coming to an end. Do you want to die here, or IN A JAEGAR?", "We stopped being an army, we're the resistance now. [beat] Welcome to the Shatterdome."—but he buys in so hard that you go right along with him.

One last thing: There is no scene that seems to scream, HEY TEENS, PLEASURE YOURSELF TO THIS. No Megan Fox bending over a car engine, or Alice Eve stripping to her bra apropos of nothing. Guillermo del Toro has never been one for dumb, sexed-up scenes, but it says something extra that what will probably be the biggest summer movie this year, and which explicitly caters to young, hormonal men, can be excellent without a whiff of cleavage.

The thing is, there's so much going on here, the audience won't even know it's missing. The best parts of Pacific Rim, aside from the amazing action (a few unspoilery highlights: last weapon, flying, coolant, samurai), are just an amalgam of the best parts of a bunch of other movies. There's a ton of Independence Day in here, and lot of Top Gun, and all kinds of Japanese Kaiju tradition. It always feels like high-level homage, though, in the very best of ways. It works.

There are places Pacific Rim could have been stronger, sure, like a tie to how regular people see this absurd story playing out just a few blocks away, and maybe it ended up one or two actors short (man, to have someone like Channing Tatum here), but that's almost entirely beside the point. This movie is so fun. It's SO FUN. You can't go to it and not have a good time. You can't go and keep from making excited, gurgly, half-laugh-half-cheer noises.


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Skyfall

The consensus on Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond so far is that he started out impressively in Casino Royale but wavered in Quantum of Solace. Here, in a Bond specifically tailored for the 50th anniversary of the series, the dangling plot-threads of Casino and Quantum are left in the wind as a more experienced, more damaged hero deals with a villain from his boss’s past. Having rebooted the franchise by depicting Bond’s first days with a license to kill in Casino Royale, this picks him up later in his career – as if he’s lived through all the films from Dr No to Die Another Day since we last saw him.

The pre-credits sequence, which coincidentally chases through a Turkish bazaar seen this year in Taken 2 and Argo, establishes that Sam Mendes – brought in to raise the tone a bit – can handle a fist-fight on top of a train as well as anyone. The boldest hire for this go-round is cinematographer Roger Deakins, who delivers the most impressive visuals this series has had since the 1960s. No one will ever mistake Skyfall for an introspective picture, though Bond’s rarely-mentioned dead parents get trotted out in a Christopher Nolanesque way which aligns him with all other orphan heroes and superheroes of current cinema. 

The challenge of delivering a series entry is to present the mandatory elements – the credits sequence, the girls, the cars, the locations, the stunts, the villains, the novelty pets, the gadgets – in fresh, surprising ways. Regular screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, augmented by John Logan, skate over their mcguffin with some computerspeak and politicking, then hit all the required notes – with sidebar-friendly anniversary nods to practically every previous Bond film, including the David Niven Casino Royale – while telling a story that doesn’t strictly adhere to the umpteenth-remake-of-Dr-No format that wore thin during the Roger Moore-Pierce Brosnan eras. Among other innovations, this is the first Bond really to make use of spectacular British locations, in and out of London, as a plot hatched in exotic places comes home to burn down the Establishment.

Craig takes a fall into a surreal, macabre credits sequence accompanied by that Adele song, then spends a reel or so as an unshaven, washed-up wreck who can’t shoot straight and shows signs of psychological trauma. It’s a character stretch Craig manages better than Brosnan’s bout with beardiness in Die Another Day, mostly because he gets his chops back – and his chops shaven, in a sexy sequence with fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris) – with credible effort. It’s a reading of the role that comes from the later Ian Fleming novels, the ones that had their titles used on films which otherwise threw away the material, and much of Skyfall feels like the kind of post-John Buchan/Bulldog Drummond thrillers Fleming wrote rather than the fantastical, science fictionish films which grew out of them.

Harris’s peppy MI6 sniper and Berenice Marlohe’s slinky woman of mystery have a few good scenes, but the main Bond girl here is Judi Dench – whose M is harried by bureaucrats and politicians who want her to retire, but has to stay in office to cope with her own nightmare legacy. Javier Bardem’s villain makes a grand entrance, walking from the back of the frame to the foreground while delivering a parable about rats in a barrel, then gets deeper under the hero’s skin than any official shrink, prodding him into reflections about his drink and pill dependency and sexual identity which would have made Sean Connery blench. Silva is a Flemingesque creation – a loathesome foreigner with a hidden (and gruesome) deformity – but Bardem adds in a little Hannibal Lecter vibe (especially in a sequence set under London) and even becomes a horror movie slasher for a surprisingly gothic, down-and-dirty climax.

Ralph Fiennes plays it ambiguously as M’s political rival, but gets some good scenes late in the day, and there’s a sharp reinvention of the role of Q from Ben Whishaw, who is now the spooks’ computer whizz (with a nice line in jargon) as well as quartermaster. And Albert Finney brings warmth and gravitas to a key role in the home stretch.

Skyfall is pretty much all you could want from a 21st Century Bond: cool but not camp, respectful of tradition but up to the moment, serious in its thrills and relatively complex in its characters but with the sense of fun that hasn’t always been evident lately. One thing’s certain: James Bond will return…
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G.I JOE: RETALIATION

If you've yet to see the film, be forewarned - everything potentially interesting (i.e. the moneyshots) about G.I. Joe: Retaliation, has already been revealed in various trailers, clips and tv spots. What that leaves is a rather bland story that dutifully plods along from one scene to the next - punctuated by brief, unoriginal fight scenes and clumsy dialogue exchanges. Yes, Duke (Channing Tatum) does indeed die in the film and fairly early on but halfway into the film, the story is fully engrossed in the larger plot to save the world and the dead Joes are all but forgotten. One of the few saving graces is that the visuals look phenomenal, Paramount and Chu should bestow praise upon Costume Designer Louise Mingenbach every chance they get. Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Jinx, Cobra Commander and even the generic Joes all convincingly look the part. However, while the Joes and Cobra 'looked' great, certain members of the cast simply didn't possess the acting skills to match their visual potential. RZA was a serviceable enough protagonist in The Man With The Iron Fist but his cameo n G.I. Joe as Blind Master results in one of the worst acting performances you'll see all year. While his performance stands out, most of the cast turns in poor-to-mediocre performances except for Ray Stevenson who's clearly having a lot of fun as the villainous Firefly. Yet oddly enough, it was mentioned that Firefly is an ex-Joe in plenty of marketing material but none of the other Joes make any reference to what should be an important aspect of his character. In fact, there's a boat load of scenes and settings shown in the film's various clips and trailers that were nowhere to be found which leads me to believe that there was a hefty amount of story left on the cutting room floor. Sure, this happens a lot in film but going back through the promotional material it seems the amount of footage cut from G.I. Joe's theatrical release easily rivals that of The Amazing Spider-Man. It will be interesting to see if we get an extended cut that beefs up the paper thin plot and supporting characters or if the additional footage will simply show up as deleted scenes. 

The best performance in G.I. Joe: Retaliation belongs to Ray Park as Snake Eyes, a character that doesn't speak. That should tell you everything you need to know about this film. It seems Paramount is applying a Michael Bay-Transformers school of thought to all of their Hasbro properties - paper-thin plot that at no point conveys a real sense of threat, wrapped in tons of explosions, well-executed fight choreography and VFX. However, Bay takes this approach and still manages to have at least a few scenes in the film that surprises the audiences. A profitable surely but nonetheless, it's not a flavor you're going to savor and analyze upon exiting the theater. Hopefully, Sony will not copy Paramount's strategy and allow Chu greater flexibility with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe; the 80's franchises deserve better than what they've been getting. 

G.I. Joe: Retaliation certainly did make the most of this past Easter weekend earning $132 million worldwide, outdoing the global opening of the 2009 first film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra by 35%. In the U.S., it would also deliver the second-best performance of that holiday weekend with $41.2 million (only behind the $61.2 million in 2010's Clash of the Titans). Overall, Retaliation looks to be well on track to outdo the $303 million global take of its predecessor.

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A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

In the first few minutes of A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth, loudest and the most wearisome part of the franchise, we meet Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), a bespectacled gent with a shabby beard in high-alert confinement, playing chess with himself. He plays himself because apparently, it’s what super-villains do.

Komarov, whose personal profile reads billionaire, whistle blower and political prisoner, is a threat to world order (especially Russia); having secreted a file that incriminates corrupt politician Viktor Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov)  another villain, if you are yet to guess despite of the pricey suit he’s wearing.

In a separate incident - one that apparently makes no sense of space, timing and momentum, when it pops into the picture ; Jack McClane (Jai Courtney), John McClane’s estranged son, assassinates someone, but makes a deal to testify against Komarov.

John, played by Bruce Willis learns about Jack, flies over and within the next five minutes turns Moscow’s streets into United Nation’s biggest auto scrap-yard.

Mr. Willis’ entry in foreign soil is like flicking off a pin of a hand-grenade. He gets out of a taxi (a brief comedy scene about a cabbie who loves his American influence) and Kaboom!

From this moment the film turns into a compendium of explosions, debris, ratta-tatting gun-fires, paramilitary choppers, fly in and out of frame without warning while the local government stands by like this happens every other Sunday. And all this ruin of public safety and tax-dollars, apparently leads, to….nothing.

Jack turns out to be a CIA op, tasked to liberate and export Komarov and his voluptuous vixen-like daughter Irina (Yuliya Snigir, often clad in polished leather or figure-hugging assault gear) to the good guys.
At one point, Jack asks his father if he gets tired of trouble following him. John doesn’t have to answer because Mr. Willis’ muted expression, whacked by Skip Wood’s bland, indefatigable screenplay, carries ear-splitting volume. The film is a clutter, without plot or conviction.

Director John Moore, once an able talent behind Behind Enemy Lines and Flight of the Pheonix, and later of duds Max Payne and the Omen remake, gets an easy one-track pay-job to rumble through scenes, where Mr. Willis and McClane’s trademark wisecracks are wasted.

A brief bit by Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Lucy McClane, livens up a few frames, but her character – like that of Mr. Courtney – asks useless, stereotypical questions, that Mr. Willis answers with his stock, cocky expression. At one time I could easily hear his expressions saying: “Just Kill Me Already!”


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